In the early morning darkness of June 28,1891 an empty train rumbled along the Green river in the foothills of the Cascade mountains headed for the coal mining town of Franklin, forty miles southeast of Seattle, Washington. Waiting to board the train at the depot were some sixty African American miners accompanied by ten private policemen, all of them armed with Winchester rifles by the owners of the nearby coal mine. As the train screeched out of the small station with its passengers a group of White miners waiting on a nearby hillside opened fire sending shots through the windows of the train, injuring no one. The angry White miners, having been on strike for many months found themselves replaced by African American workers. The mob turned from their position along the train tracks and headed towards a hillside encampment near the entrance to the mineshaft where other black workers were located. They came upon a guard named Ben Gaston, a native of Chester Illinois who had arrived the prior month along with hundreds of other black workers from the Midwest. “Halt!” Gaston called as the small group approached.[1] “We’re citizens going hunting” one of them said as they got closer.[2] As they passed Gaston one of the men turned around and shot him in the side at point blank range, so close that the blast had burned his flesh, Gaston recalled.

The late 1880’s saw great uneasiness in Washington’s coal mining industry. Labor activism associated with the Knights of Labor was changing the relationship between mine owners and their workers. Disagreements over wages and benefits between the Oregon Improvement Company and its miners led to frequent strikes which were to be answered by the recruitment of over five hundred Midwestern African American miners in the Spring of 1891. Their passage from the Midwest to Washington was secured by the Oregon Improvement Company under a veil of secrecy to keep their plan from being foiled by militant labor activists. Upon their arrival in the mining town of Franklin, the African American miners settled in and began working. For a time things remained peaceful. Then White miners attacked.

This article examines in depth the events of what a local paper coined “The Day of Black Terror” and situates that story in a longer context, revealing a checkered past where corrupt Gilded Age forces successfully stoked racist angst to turn worker against worker in the name of crushing the labor movement, and where strikebreaking provided a path toward opportunity for African American miners. It reveals too a side of the Knights of Labor that is not well known. Historians usually emphasize the inclusive solidarity of the Knights which organized Black workers, and notably Black miners, in the East and the South. But not in the West. As this article demonstrates, the Knights in Washington, goaded by the clever tactics of the Oregon Improvement Company, deployed a practice of White man’s unionism first against Chinese workers, then against Black workers.

Railroads, Coal, and Race

The coal fields of Washington helped fuel the increasing energy demands of the 1880’s. One could say that coal mining was a byproduct of the network of rail lines crisscrossing the North American continent as coal fueled the railroads, steamships, and communities of the Pacific coast. The Oregon Improvement Company (OIC) was formed in 1880 by the Northern Pacific Railroad’s Henry Villard to consolidate his Puget Sound-area resources under one company.[3] Based in Portland, Oregon the Northern Pacific/OIC had a regional management office located in Seattle and was governed by a board of directors in New York City. The OIC operated coal mines in King County, Washington: Newcastle and Coal Creek, east of Renton; Black Diamond and Franklin, 30 miles southeast of Seattle. OIC mining towns were connected to each other by its sister corporation—the Colombia & Puget Sound Railroad which operated a rail line that led to Seattle’s waterfront near Pioneer Square where coal was loaded onto ships that went to Portland, San Francisco, and as far away as the Hawaiian Islands and Australia.[4] At one time the Northern Pacific and its subsidiaries held a monopoly on transportation in the Pacific Northwest.

Immigrant labor was exploited from the very beginning of the existence of railroads in Washington. The backbreaking process of laying rails was done by Chinese workers as Washington saw a thirteenfold increase in Chinese immigrants between 1870 and 1880.[5] However, once the major Northwest rail lines were completed “the Chinese were thrown on the labor market, creating an unemployment problem in urban areas”.[6] The Chinese workers were feared by White workers not only because of their reputation for being reliable and hard-working laborers, but also because business owners often drove wages down by paying the Chinese less money than their White counterparts.[7] The Knights of Labor in particular chose to stoke sinophobic fears rather than growing their membership by recruiting the Chinese workers among their ranks.

Founded in 1869, the Knights of Labor had become by the mid 1880s the most important labor movement in the United States with thousands of “local assemblies” in hundreds of towns and cities representing up to three quarters of a million members.  Functioning partly as a union bargaining with employers, the Knights was also a political movement pushing for labor friendly legislation and promoting the idea that a “Cooperative Commonwealth” should replace disorganized capitalism. Solidarity was its watchword, signaled by the slogan “an injury to one is an injury to all.” And the Knights preached solidarity across racial and gender lines: tens of thousands of Black workers and women workers were members. There was one official exception. Chinese workers were not welcome in the Knights. Indeed on the West Coast, Knights of Labor assemblies participated in and sometimes led campaigns to persecute and deport Chinese workers.  [8]

Three years after the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 racial tensions against the Chinese community turned violent. On September 7^th, 1885 a group of men opened fire on a camp at a Squak Valley hop farm (near Issaquah, WA) occupied by Chinese laborers. The Seattle Post Intelligencerreported at “10 o’clock the occupants of the camp were startled by the discharge of a volley of musketry, and they jumped from their bunks only to find that they were surrounded by a party of well-armed White men, determined to murder them”.[9] The attackers tried to set the camp ablaze, but only succeeded in setting one tent on fire before the unidentified men fled. Three men identified as Mong Goat, Fung Wee, and Yeng Sin were killed that night while three others were injured by the gunfire.[10] Two days later, at a King County Coroner’s inquest seven men, five White, two native were identified as the perpetrators. It is not clear whether any were Knights members.[11]

The Squak Valley attack emboldened others to use violent means to force a withdraw of Chinese immigrants from the area. Just one day after the Squak Valley attack was reported in the newspapers, Chinese laborers at the Newcastle coal mine in King County found themselves the next target of angry White workers. Around midnight on September 11^th, 1885 the Chinese sleeping quarters at Coal Creek was surrounded by about fourteen masked men who, by discharging their firearms and yelling struck great fear into the Chinese occupants who evacuated and scattered into the darkness of the nearby woods, and upon looking back the escapees witnessed their lodge and cookhouse being totally consumed in flames. [12] T.J. Milner, a superintendent of the OIC and manager of the Puget Sound Shore Railroad claimed that the Chinese were merely trying to do the menial work that Whites will not do, and went on to suggest that if “the war is continued on the Chinamen . . . the company will feel justified in shutting down the mine altogether, thereby throwing hundreds of White men out of employment”.[13]

Widespread support for a movement to expel Chinese workers from the region was evident in local newspapers. A so-called Anti-Chinese Congress convened in Seattle on September 20^th of 1885 which aimed to “devise ways and means to make the Chinese go”.[14] Following a marching band, the delegation paraded to the Occidental hotel where Mayor R.J. Weisbach of Tacoma presided over the assembly. Present were some 64 men and women representing communities from up and down Puget Sound, including the mining towns of Newcastle, and Black Diamond.[15] The committee passed resolutions that day blaming the government for not legislating the Chinese immigrants out of the territory, calling for all business owners to immediately fire all Chinese employees and “that in adopting the above resolutions we are guided by the conviction that the enforcement of the same will eradicate the Chinese evil, and we hold ourselves not responsible for any acts of violence which may arise from the non-compliance with these resolutions.”[16]

The Oregon Improvement Company was exploiting the labor of a marginalized group of Chinese immigrants and this stoked the anger of White workers—not because it was unjust, but because it effectively marginalized the Whites’ own ability to bargain for fair wages. That is, if the Chinese laborers worked for less pay than the Whites, there would be no incentive for the OIC to hire White workers for those same jobs. The White workers, many of whom were members of the Knights of Labor, blamed the Chinese laborers for being stealing their jobs rather than focusing blame at the OIC for discriminatory practices based on ethnicity. This dynamic of where to place blame foreshadowed the problems that faced African American miners when they arrived a few years later. .As historian Carlos Schwantes states, the labor movement was in its formative years during the 1880’s in Washington Territory and “one lesson was that in a young and impatient society, radical action might offer a quick solution to the complex social and economic problems vexing the industrial world”, and “the Knights of Labor was largely predicated on that assertion”.[17]

In Washington state's mining towns, the Knights served as an umbrella organization which advocated for better working conditions, wages, services offered in the company towns, living conditions, schools, etc.[18] Knights membership soared as it tangled with the Oregon Improvement Company and attacked Chinese workers. .[19] The Knights were seen by White workers as an effective labor organization because of their successes in driving Chinese workers out of communities in 1885. As the  Knights grew their influence in King County, the OIC prepared to strike back.  With  Chinese employees now gone from the mines and most other jobs,  OIC manager John Howard vowed that the company would not “submit again to the ‘dictation of a lot of demagogues and scum’—his vivid description of the Knights”.[20]

Violence at Newcastle

By 1888 the fault lines between the Northern Pacific/Oregon Improvement Company and its now all-White mining workforce, and their unions began to rupture. No longer the only labor union in town, the Knights of Labor was now joined by the United Miners and Mine Laborers Society, also known as the Miners Union. Started in 1881 by San Francisco’s Burnette Haskell, the Miners Union was rumored to now be a phony company union.[21] Workers at Newcastle became upset when a foreman, Kelly Ramsey who was a member of the Knights of Labor was replaced by  Stephen Vaughn who was with the Miners Union. The miners saw this new foreman, as an enemy to the Knights, or in union parlance a “scab” and soon other miners under the OIC came to Newcastle to join the brouhaha.[22] “So far as I have been able to learn the miners have no grievance against the company, but are engaged in fighting among themselves”, said T.J. Milner, continuing the OIC strategy of creating the conditions for conflict and then appearing to rise above it all by implying that they have no hand in the matter and that labor is too unreasonable to deal with.

When Vaughn reported to work as foreman at the Newcastle mine the men on shift refused to work for him and went home on strike. Miners from both labor organizations appealed to the  King County Sheriff for support. Sheriff Cochrane traveled to Newcastle to meet with the mine superintendent but he refused to use his resources to protect one side over the other citing a lack of county funds post a security detail.[23] The remainder of 1888 saw little movement towards a resolution and a return to normalcy, so the OIC threatened to hire nonunion miners to replace the Knights.

            A riot took place on January 3^rd, 1889, once again because a Miners Union employee was assigned as a worksite foreman the prior week. The KOL committee called a strike on January 2^nd, but some miners continued to work, so a group of miners from nearby Gilman, present-day Issaquah, went to Newcastle mine with the intention of intimidating the working miners who ignored the call for strike.[24] “The crowd came noisily into town, firing pistols, shouting, and by such other boisterous means” and on their way to the mine beat badly two men, Robert Lowery and James Probert who both required stiches to mend cuts to the skull from being hit over the head with clubs. As workers poured out of the mine several were beaten by the mob before they were able to disperse. The Gilman men went back to Newcastle where many people were gathered waiting to hear what happened at the mine including the president of the Miners Union, Thomas Hughes, who was severely injured by the attackers.[25] The violent day ended when Miners Union member, Llewellyn Jones came busting out of his home with a gun in a scene captured by accounts relayed to Seattle P-I reporters:

“He [Jones] knocked over one man with the gun, and struck at another, but, missing, the weapon flew out of his hands and he fell down. Then the rioters jumped on him and hammered him terribly about the body. Jones’ sister seeing him in the midst of the fray, rushed in and threw herself between him and his assailants. A man named William Ruston, it appears, was bent upon shooting Jones with a rifle, and was only prevented from doing so by the young woman. He thrust his rifle first to one side of the girl, and then the other, but was unable to fire without hitting her. While Ruston was endeavoring to shoot, someone, whose identity will probably never be known, fired a Winchester and the ball struck Ruston in the abdomen. He dropped to the ground and a scene of indescribable confusion ensued.”[26]

Occupation of Newcastle

The violence ended after shots were fired, Ruston reportedly died twenty minutes later, and the mob returned to Gilman. Fearing the return of violence at Newcastle, Colonel John C. Haines of the Washington Territory National Guard ordered a detachment of troops to report to Newcastle. This action doesn’t seem strange except  that John Haines was also the head attorney for the Oregon Improvement Company, and as a Colonel he was not at liberty to deploy militia without official orders from Territorial Governor Eugene Semple. What’s more, a number of armed private detectives from  William C. Sullivan’s Thiel Detective Agency were ordered by the OIC and began to pour into Newcastle. Upon arriving, they were deputized as United States Marshals of Washington Territory.[27] When Governor Semple learned about this he was angered and set out to learn why Col Haines ordered troops to Newcastle without his approval. The Governor was also uneasy with the prospect of an armed private security force—accountable only to the OIC—occupying a community in his Territory.

            In a January 26^th, 1889 letter Governor Semple confronted U.S. Marshal T.J. Hamilton to find out if the Thiel guards were legitimately deputized. Hamilton responded in the affirmative, that he had deputized a number of men “at Newcastle, and at trestles and bridges on the line of the C.&P.S.R.R. between Newcastle and Renton.[28] The Colombia & Puget Sound Railroad was one of the many arms of the Northern Pacific/Oregon Improvement Company that included mines, railroads, and steamship lines. Marshal Hamilton explained further that the decision to deputize the Thiel detectives was made because of representations from OIC management that “bridges and trestles on the like of said road would be burned or otherwise destroyed and thus prevent the operating of passenger trains, on all of which U.S. mail is carried” along with fears from the Newcastle Postmaster that striking miners would interfere with the mail service.[29] This way, the OIC could ensure their property was protected from striking miners by getting a nod from federal authorities under the excuse that the newly deputized force was needed to the free flow of the U.S. mail.

Sheriff Cochrane visited Newcastle on January 27^th most likely having read the same newspaper article that tipped off Governor Semple about the occupation of Newcastle. There the Sheriff reported seeing “some thirty men armed with rifles, pistols and bowie knives &c”, and that contrary to what Marshal Hamilton was told the striking coal miners would be easier to keep under control.[30] That is, the people of Newcastle viewed the deputy marshals as an unlawful force who have done nothing but intimidate and harass residents trying to go about their business. Cochrane reported that “peaceable and law-abiding citizens of Newcastle had been stopped by these Detectives and were asked numerous questions; and one man was halted and at the muzzle of a rifle made to answer a number of interrogatories; and even the baskets of school children have been searched by these Deputy Marshals”.[31] So unwelcome were the Thiel Detectives that Cochrane was worried that the coal miners would snap and attack them for such blatant interference with the rights of Newcastle residents; Cochrane reported to the Governor that “if any trouble occurs at Newcastle it will be traceable to the presence of the Deputy Marshals, and I shall not be surprised to hear of the death of some of Sullivan’s men at any time”.[32]

            H.W. McNeill of the OIC provided the company’s side of the story arguing that tensions existed in Newcastle between the men who incited the January 3^rd riot and those who ignored the strike. The Knights of Labor “demanded that this company put the men at work who had gone out and caused the riot, with the threat that if it was not done, they would have another riot, and would take ten lives for one and destroy property”.[33] McNeill claimed that the OIC appealed to Sheriff Cochrane and Governor Semple for protection from the KOL, but were denied by the former and ignored by the latter, so they obtained their own guards to protect their properties. Countering Sheriff Cochrane’s observations, McNeill claimed “the effect was miraculous. Confidence was at once restored amongst the men at work, and the rioters ceased their threats. Not a soul complained, except the Sheriff of King County, who had refused to guard our property, it being a notorious fact that he was in sympathy with the rioters”[34] The company line was repeated by various officers of the OIC who claimed that the Knights were threatening violence, they needed to protect the Post Office, and Col Haines was right to deploy troops without the Governor’s approval because of urgency of the situation, and finally that the Sheriff was a KOL sympathizer.

An Ironclad Contract

            By 1891, it had been five years since the anti-Chinese violence washed over the Northwest. The popularity of the Knights of Labor had been bolstered by its move to expel the Chinese workers from the area. Now, with no Chinese workers to blame, the KOL was in danger of being outmaneuvered by the OIC’s strategic use of the Miners Union to replace rank-and-file leaders within the mines with their handpicked men. And the fight was about to enter a new stage. The OIC now hit their miners with a contract calling for a fifteen percent reduction in wages. Along with the reduction in pay were other terms that did not set well with the KOL—no provision for an 8-hour workday, and a clause prohibiting anyone from interfering with the OIC’s “just right of employing, retaining and discharging from employment any person or persons . . .”.[35] The Knights of Labor had spent years trying to negotiate an 8 hour workday and for more standing in hiring and firing practices, so this so-called ironclad contract wouldn’t stand a chance of being accepted by the miners. The KOL authorized a strike on April 1^st, 1891.

The contract had been drafted by Theron B. Corey, a Midwesterner who had been hired by the OIC as a superintendent of the Franklin mine, twenty-five miles south of Newcastle. At Franklin, miners had been laid off and mine operations ceased months earlier to allow for the redesign of mine operations, including  a realignment of the mine shaft and new hoisting equipment.[36] By February 1891 Franklin was nearing completion of the realignment and OIC’s Seattle general superintendent C.J. Smith was urging company executives in New York City to open Franklin as soon as possible[37] Local OIC management viewed the Franklin mine as leverage in the battle with the Knights. When operations resumed, the OIC would try to make sure the miners were not affiliated with the KOL and recruiting Black miners from the Midwest would be key.

Planning for this move had been underway before Corey unveiled his new contract and triggered the renewed battle with the Knights in Newcastle. A letter from C.J. Smith, chief of OIC operations in Seattle to W. Starbuck in the New York headquarters revealed the strategy:

“There is no great risk at the present time by placing negro labor at Franklin. . .

The immediate outlay for the transportation you understand we will be able to collect back from the negroes in the first two or three months work, so that the actual outlay or expense to us in the transaction will be comparatively small. Our superintendent estimates that by placing negro labor at Franklin we ought to be able to reduce the cost of mining coal there . . . At Newcastle the conditions are even more favorable. . . With the reduction of 15% in wages which have every hopes of being able to make on the first of April and with the contract for steady labor which we will get at that time and the repressing influences that will be exercised by the negro labor at Franklin, I have every reason to believe we will reduce the cost of mining at Newcastle . . .”[38] (emphasis added)

Corey traveled to the midwestern states of Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Missouri with handbills that read “Colored Workingmen! Notice! Wanted for the New Coal Mines in the New State of Washington . . . 500 colored coal miners and laborers for inside and outside work . . . Good wages will be paid above men. Steady work for 3 years. No strikes or trouble of any kind. The finest country on earth . . . Railroad fare, with board and sleeping-car accommodations, will be furnished (and deducted) . . .”.[39]  A May 1^st 1891 telegraph to OIC president W.H. Starbuck was sent—in code to conceal just what the company was doing—and translated it reads: “Expect to have Franklin coal mine laborers start West on May 11^th; matters arranged here for carrying out programme of colored laborers.”[40]

African Americans had a long history of working in coal mines. Slave labor was used as early as 1760 to mine coal in the American South, and this forced work experience allowed them to continue mining coal after the Civil War.[41] With the end of Reconstruction and the return to power of white supremacist regimes in the South, the practice of convict leasing represented a new form of slavery where a business could lease prisoners from government officials for a fee to be used as laborers.[42] The fee to lease prisoners to work a coal mine was much less than the cost of paying wage earners. In Alabama for instance historian Ed Diaz points out that Southern “justice” ensured that there was a steady supply of prison laborers because things like obscene language, vagrancy, or using disrespectful language towards Whites could land you in jail.[43]

African Americans also worked in the coal mines of northern and border states, sometimes alongside White miners, sometimes recruited to break strikes. The Knights of Labor welcomed Black miners and other Black workers in most states. Indeed, during the mid and late 1880s, there were ten Knights assemblies of African American miners in Ohio, Kentucky, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.[44] As Corey crisscrossed the Midwest, he probably avoided coal towns where the Knights remained active. It was getting easier to do so by 1891. The Knights of Labor was in decline. Competition with the newly launched United Mine Workers and the American Federation of Labor cost the KOL members and assemblies. By then there were only a handful of coal miners’ assemblies remaining in the states he visited.[45]

Even though the OIC tried to conceal their scheme to import miners the Knights of Labor were made aware of Corey’s eastward journey, most likely due to the fliers he posted across the Midwest. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer ran a story on April 23^rd where the KOL speculated on Corey’s purpose, and it turned out to be pretty accurate.  When the P-I asked C.J. Smith, who had been passing along cryptic telegrams to New York about Corey’s progress, he deflected by stating that he did not want to comment on the KOL statement for he had not read it.[46] Corey was well-suited for the task of recruiting Black strikebreakers because he had done it before in when he worked for a coal mine in Braidwood, Ill in 1877 which goes to show that using African Americans to subvert labor unions was not a new concept.[47]

The Black Train

The train carrying Black coal miners departed St. Paul, Minnesota and headed west, stopping first in Palmer, Washington on May 17^th, 1891 early enough in the morning to make the headlines of that day’s newspaper in Seattle where the new miners were called “invaders”.[48] A superintendent at Franklin offered an explanation of why so many new miners had been recruited: “Shall we fill this mine with the old men who have been living in this section for years and continue the long experience of petty strikes, high wages, union dictation, consequent lack of discipline and expensive operation, or shall we bring in an entirely new force of men who will make a contract to work for reasonable wages and be amenable to discipline?”[49] The assertion that the Black miners were strikebreakers at this point was not entirely accurate as the Franklin mine was closed for efficiency upgrades, not because of an active strike.

The Black miners detrained in Palmer instead of heading straight for the mines in order to keep the KOL miners at a safe distance. Under the cover of early morning darkness, they marched under the protection of private guards to Franklin where they laid eyes for the first time on their new home complete with armed guards and barbed wire. C.J. Smith reported to New York by telegram that the miners arrived, there was no trouble, and that he was pleased that “public and newspapers are with us”.[50] Three days later on May 20 Smith updated Starbuck writing that “Negroes getting accustomed to work at Franklin. Newcastle miners still on strike, but show signs of weakness. I do not expect this will last long”.[51] And on May 27, Smith expressed his surprise at  not “having the slightest bloodshed or even a fight of any kind between our guards or negroes and the white miners”, and wrote that he looked forward to a time when the company would have complete control over the mines which he noted  had never before been possible.[52]

Violence at Franklin

            If their first few weeks in Washington State had been largely peaceful for the miners from the Midwest, that was about to change. Now that the Franklin mine was operating, the company was eager to get Newcastle up and running again and ordered the transfer of sixty Black miners to Newcastle on the morning of June 28^th. This precipitated the clash that was detailed at the start of this essay, as armed white miners attacked the train station in Franklin. It proved to be only the start of the violence on that deadly day. The train carrying armed African American miners and guards arrived safely in Newcastle about an hour after their wild departure from gunfire in Franklin. Back in Franklin, the invading White miners reportedly “thought that the guard was so weakened by the withdrawal of men to protect the train that the opportunity was a favorable one for an attack on the negroes”.[53] They made for the Black miners’ camp which was when Ben Gaston’s unfortunate meeting with White miners’ brutality took place. He was shot in his right hip causing him to fall and roll down a hill for about thirty feet. One of the rioters picked up Gaston’s gun and ran off with it, leaving him lying there bleeding until he was found by others and taken to a hospital where he recovered.[54] The attack on Gaston infuriated Franklin’s Black community, and it was only the intervention by the Sullivan guards and the county sheriff that kept them from going to the White miners’ homes and driving them into the Green River.[55] The White miners scattered and quiet resumed until that evening.

            A little before 7:30pm, when the regular passenger train was due to return from Newcastle, the hired Sullivan guards noticed two men with guns hiding behind tree stumps near the Franklin train station. The Sullivan men ordered them to leave the area and after arguing with the guards the men got up and walked away until they were out of sight. Right about then the 7:30 train was returning with the guards and miners from Newcastle and two shots rang out from the bushes on the west end of the town near the arriving train. One of the guards on the train returned fire and that is when everyone who had a gun on board started shooting in every direction, not knowing where the shots were coming from as the “sharp crack, crack, crack of Winchesters was heard both from above and below, from the train and the flats and the mountainside far above the east end of the town”.[56]

When the train came to a final stop in town, the African American residents of Franklin, having heard the shots and still fuming over the shooting of Ben Gaston made for the arsenal at the company store and emptied it of arms. “One idea of every Black man in camp was to get a gun and shoot into the flat, which they believed to be swarming with strikers concealed in the brush” so they took up a position on an steep embankment by the railroad tracks that overlooks the “flats”, the area by the Green River occupied by the white miners’ homes and they opened fire.[57] Bullets shredded the homes below as the residents fled in terror to take shelter behind rocks on the other side of the river. Over one thousand rounds were fired during the barrage that lasted about ten minutes until the sheriff was able to convince them to allow a ceasefire.[58] There were several injuries from bullet wounds reported from residents in the flats, but amazingly no deaths there. But others were not so lucky. Two striking miners, Ed Williams and Tom Morris, were shot dead by Park Robinson, an OIC manager who said that he saw the two men running toward his dwelling during the melee.

            The violence ended soon after when the governor dispatched National Guard troops to maintain the peace. In an unprecedented move, he also ordered the King County mining towns to be disarmed, and for the Sullivan guards to be sent away.[59] The Knights of Labor denied any part in the hostilities at Franklin but were widely blamed in the press. The violence in any case accomplished what the OIC had sought. While national guard troops occupied Franklin for most of July the strike was declared over, and at the end of September local assembly 2885 of the Knights of Labor dissolved its charter. The charter ended up in company hands and was reportedly cut out of its frame and sent to Corey who kept it as “a relic of the stormy times of last spring and summer”.[60]

            Nationwide, the Knights of Labor was losing out to the new American Federation of Labor (AFL) in the 1890s and would not survive the severe depression that gripped the country from 1893-1897. As it faded, so did the practice of inclusive unionism that had been one of hallmarks of the KOL in most regions of the country. The AFL practiced a narrower form of unionism, based on craft skills and excluding the unskilled, and based on harsh white supremacy. Most AFL unions would not allow African Americans or Asian Americans to become members.

This was a practice prefigured by the Knights of Labor in the West which had built strength by driving out Chinese workers in the 1880s and then tried to mobilize racial exclusion again against African American miners  in the coal mining towns of Washington State. The Oregon Improvement Company had counted upon this and used it to destroy the Knights.  

            In dealing with the OIC’s recruitment of African American miners, the KOL thought that the tactics they used during the anti-Chinese campaign would bring them success again. In doing so they missed the opportunity to ally themselves with the African American miners as a united front against the OIC. Booker T. Washington, once a coal miner himself said that “race prejudice is a two-edged sword, and it is not to the advantage of organized labor to produce among the Negroes a prejudice and fear of union labor such as to create in this country a race of strike breakers.”[61] The national leadership of the Knights of Labor understood this. Their western affiliates did not.  

© Copyright Jourdan Marshall 2020
HSTAA 498 Autumn 2019